Pop!

Desmond
Rapacious for the experience of finally committing to his plan, 

Desmond held his secret close to him, like a precious gem that 

he had polished for a long,long time.
He wanted to kill, but not just any wanton whore that crossed 

his path.  He wanted it to be the perfect crime, executed in a 

grand, melodramatic way.  It would baffle the generations to 

come.
Desmond sought to not only rid society of stupid women, but 

also to take a pop at the Police. A misogynist, always 

secretive in his dealings with others, he was on the rise

in his career as a Banker in the city.  Daily he could perform 

magic on the Stock Exchange floor, which intrigued his colleagues. 

They were constantly taking a pop at him, his wispy grey hair 

skirting his immaculate collar, the violet ink in his vintage 

fountain pen, the sea of empty chocolate wrappers that littered 

his desk, his disregard for the value of their proffered 

friendship.
No, Desmond was not bothered about the opinions of others. 
His aim and motivation in life was to make a lot of money and 

create a perfect plan for the execution of women that he procured 

every weekend through his favourite agencies.
Desmond knew that his sexual preferences, bizarre to others but 

always acceptable to the hookers and call girls he employed, would 

one fine day lead him to the fulfilment of his crime.
Murder, he knew, would be a great high, a supercharged pop for him. 

His day was dawning, and his excitement was growing into a frenzied 

anticipation. He awoke on that particularly cool November morning, 

singing softly to himself:
"Half a pound of twopenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle,
That's the way the money goes
POP goes the weasel".
It was a Saturday, it was ' the'  day,  he knew it.  Today would 

bring  the culmination of all his planning.  Tonight he would perform 

the perfect murder. 

Pop!

The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule 

You Say aka Whirlwind

You Say aka Whirlwind

You say,

Speak into my life,

A goose's chant

of the misfortunes of old,

On cobbled streets,

Of the leaks in my heart,

Rotting cabbages and kings.

Speak, whisper please,

The dust of me,

Of gatherings in neglect

on creased corners,

Of synaptic anxieties,

Nano sized, snipping in the night.

Speak, beguiling and tender,

Angels that court,

Of souls withered on fantasy,

From fuzzy screens,

Of rot, avarice, and rape,

Un-relished words frog at the throat.

Whirlwind, yours is a sing song voice.

You say.

Copyright Gabrielle Goldsmith

May 2013

The Stallion

Where will the quest lead me? The lashing rain ahead of us is like an encouragement, an invitation in the tide of my life. Ever since the reconciliation with Finn, I keep asking myself how does luck descend? I was forlorn and beaten down by the persistence of triumphant animals. They always seemed to get the better of me. Then Finn with his mesmerising grin, his green eyes and pliantly soft voice, brought his coda into my half addled brain. I would stand transfixed with fear, when he would calmly stroke the fur of the animal, the coat of a friend, the rough hide of a creature, and they would all be transformed. His endeavour was remarkable in its solicitude.
'Is there a potion?' I eventually asked him, 'Something I can take to enable me to outwit marauders who try to inveigle me?'
'No,' he sighed, laughing his quiet assured laugh.
'No secret. Just ask yourself what happens when the light goes out? That is the nature of all animals, they live not by light but by instinct and smell. You must become like them, in their skins.'
I tried it much later in life, and do you know, it worked.
Even now, as his body steams beneath me, steaming still, glossy and fierce, I am aware that an animal's wildness can be tamed. It is like a history foretold.

The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule

Madam Heath

The madam floated through the tasselled door in a funk. Snarling and spitting obscenities at the girls, her mouth raw from glittery chewed leaf tobacco. The girls, half nude, were lolling together like a sheaf of corn, so it was hard to see where one limb ended and another began. Random long limbs attached to beautiful bodies, exquisite faces, the atmosphere rife with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. The madam, like a sparrow-hawk swooping down on the prey, spoke out in a sing-song voice.
'There is a feud going on and I do not intend to be the vanquished. I have seldom had need to turn to men for protection in this MY BUSINESS, and I do not intend to break the habit of a lifetime. So, beware that from now on, things are going to get pretty nasty around here. Now I am off to sound the gong. You all know the drill'.
With that pronouncement Madam Heath swept out and all the girls began quietly twittering and trilling.
The gong sounded three times and number three girls went out to meet her first john of the night.

The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule

Hiroshima

The bomb fell quietly on the sleeping city. The bombadier was insouciant. It was just part of his job. The trembling buildings cascading into dust was not a sight he witnessed. All he saw, as he headed for home, was the plume, the mushroom cloud, the darkening skies. Striped with ash of humans.
He was feted in his own country, with rosettes of celandines and daisies. Well it was the end of a long war. The principles of thrift and want still prevailed throughout the country.
But back on the ground, where once there were buildings, communities and fields of rosebuds, now only shadows where poeple had been blasted into walls. The fields alive with children running helter skelter, free and happy, now silent. Just the odd pilgrim in rags. People losing their minds upon realisation that they alone had survived. One left in a village echoing silence.
A grandfather, standing by a jetty in rags, but living in order to nurture his grandson. To educate him amidst an inundation of poverty and pain. The love this grandfather feels is expressed daily to this slip of a boy. It is his vindication of right over wrong.
The sun keeps rising each day, and the music of the storks returning to the city is another incentive to the old man. And a gesture of joy to the boy. Together they eat rice, and as the grandfather tells his stories of days gone by, the days before the bomb dropped, the bond which has been forged will once again be broken.
Because, the boy has to depart to another island with another person, a social worker, where there will be schools full of books and other children to play with who have survived.
But the boy does not want to leave his grandfather and he clings to his ragged pants but the old man knows it is for the best. Their hearts are breaking.
The social worker knows it is just part of his job.

The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule

A Dusty Lot

I am writing to you from a dusty lot where flowers have no hope of flowering. Yet still they try, putting out minute and slender buds of tender tendrils. No hammers could do as much damage as the  pervasive dust. Yellow as celandine pollen, but choking in its blanketing pollution. I too am choking like the buds. I am fluent in pain. I would leave this place but have lost the map where X does not mark the spot. It is merely the grave cross of all the flowers. There will be rebuilding on this dusty site, where might is right and the dark side of the moon is more life enhancing than this place.
I am writing to you from a dusty lot, and my own lot is clearly to mend my camera. To send you reflections so that the rebuilding will be creative, not bereft of all humanity. We are humans are we not?

The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule

Falling Away

Falling Away
 
Yesterday I was worth thousands, but now  only the knowledge 

of fatality remains.  I am destitute,  but this is a relief, 

the life I once relished now slips away like a worn out overcoat. 

My soul sang of beauty and fame, but my spirit shrivelled and 

became as a tiny walnut, nobbled and marked.  Across the cobbled 

streets I once had pushed my fruit cart, growing it into the 

biggest and best store in the city.

I lived every day like a peach, rare, juicy and pampered.  But 

these memories are now as shambolic mirrors in the cruel circus 

which beheld me and three me away.  Now I see it all like a 

lifetime of fractured moments that could have given me rewards 

of joy, love and fulfillment.

Now, as I hear the brittle rain on the pavements which are now 

my home, I see the crowds, the jeering, shouting people, 

pointing, staring and judging me for what I am.  A murderer of 

the beautiful Emma, who once stood here, holding her red velvet 

dolly.

Is there no respite from emory, haunting and cruel, remembered 

and relived?

The price I pay is that memory, my fall from grace, my forever 

shame, atonement can never be mine.

Yesterday I was worth thousands, but now only the knowledge of 

fatality remains. Falling Away 

The copyright of this post belongs to Valerie Rule 

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